Hydrophilic Enviornments May Promote Easier Device Delivery

As minimally invasive technologies continue to permeate the
healthcare industry, device makers need to ensure that their products make the
process as smooth as possible. To this end, one solution offered to the OEMs
focusing on device delivery is a hydrophilic coating that helps minimize
resistance the catheter could face when traveling through the body.

Medical device manufacturers continue to develop products
that require minimally invasive surgeries, thereby reducing the risk of open
body surgeries. Sometimes, these devices need to be navigated through tortuous,
narrow blood vessels and anatomies. When that is the case, a combination of
guidewires and catheters can be used.

Guidewires are used to position catheters and other types of
hollow tubes (e.g., balloon catheters) within the body. When advancing a
catheter over a guidewire and through a blood vessel, physicians can meet
natural resistance due to stiction to the vascular inner surface. Maintaining a
hydrophilic environment can help alleviate this resistance by enabling the
catheter to slide through the wet environment. By definition, hydrophilic
surfaces have an affinity to water, thereby attracting water molecules and
resulting in a lubricious surface. These characteristics are significant to
medical applications because they lessen friction forces within blood vessels,
reducing the amount of potential tissue damage and ensuring patient comfort. It
makes navigating winding blood vessels easier for physicians, leading to more
accurate device positioning.

The types of devices that are delivered through catheters
include bare metal stent grafts and drug-eluting stents. These devices are used
for percutaneous coronary interventions and endovascular stent graft placement,
such as abdominal aortic aneurysm procedures. Furthermore, the neurovascular
field is seeing increased use of catheters to reach vessels and aneurysms
within the brain. Advances in medical technology have led to the development of
brain stents and aneurysm coils that can be delivered through catheters and put
in place without the need for craniotomy. Other catheter device delivery
applications include insertion of chest drains and central venous catheters,
insertion of PEG tubes, and insertion of the leads for an artificial pacemaker
or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator.

Recent news has touted advances in transcatheter heart valves.
The development of heart replacement valves that do not require open-heart
surgery for implantation is a big step forward in cardiovascular medicine. Due
to advanced age or illness, many patients with aortic stenosis (an abnormal
narrowing of the aortic valve) are at high risk of dying or being chronically
debilitated from open-heart surgery. According to a study by researchers at New
York-Presbyterian Columbia, investigators found that 50% of patients whose
aortic stenosis was left untreated died within one year.

Transcatheter heart valve systems are made up of a replacement
valve, a metal frame, and a balloon catheter, which are all packaged into the
size of a pencil’s width. Physicians thread the system through a catheter
inserted via incision in the patient’s groin, then into an artery, and up into
the heart. There, the balloon expands to fit the artificial valve into the
patient’s heart. Snaking a catheter all the way up to the heart through the
femoral and iliac arteries covers a fair amount of distance within those blood
vessels. Maintaining a hydrophilic environment can help ease the insertion
dilator, introducer sheath, and the catheter, which leads to more accurate
device implantation and prevents unnecessary tissue damage.

DSM[1] saw a need to create
technology that encourages hydrophilic environment for guidewire and catheter
insertion and advancement within the body. ComfortCoat coatings are used on
catheters, guidewires, and other devices in vascular and urinary applications,
where lubricity and water retention are necessary characteristics. In essence,
any device small enough to be delivered via catheter can benefit.

Advances in medical devices come in many shapes and sizes
and the techniques used to deliver them must remain flexible and keep up with
ongoing advances. The tools used to deliver implants, such as stents, stent
grafts, and heart valves, can be enhanced with coatings and surface
modulations. By making it easier for physicians to move and accurately place
devices within the body, costs can be lowered, surgery times can be shortened,
and devices can start working to help patients faster.

John Marugg, Ph.D is the business manager for coatings at
DSM Biomedical where he is responsible for the medical
coatings business. In his 18 years with the company, he has negotiated various
multi-year development, technology license, and manufacturing deals with large
pharmaceutical and biotech companies, as well as settled disputes and potential
litigation matters with suppliers and customers with high-risk exposures. Dr.
Marugg can be reached at john.marugg@dsm.com[2].

As minimally invasive technologies continue to permeate the
healthcare industry, device makers need to ensure that their products make the
process as smooth as possible. To this end, one solution offered to the OEMs
focusing on device delivery is a hydrophilic coating that helps minimize
resistance the catheter could face when traveling through the body.

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